Phoenix
by SomewhereApart
Summary: Robin and Regina flee the Towers together on 9/11, and Robin makes a seemingly impossible suggestion.
1. Chapter 1

Regina Blanchard is accustomed to fear, to the punch of adrenaline that makes fingers cold and shaky, that flushes her cheeks and makes cuts and bruises throb with heat. It's a feeling she experiences more often than she likes to admit, when her husband is in a not-so-rare mood and comes at her with raised voices and clenched fists.

She's accustomed to fear, but this is something else entirely.

If she was thinking, if she was capable of thought, she might call it terror, but right now thought has been abandoned for the sheer focus of flight. There's an airliner countless stories above them, flames eating their way through the upper floors. She tries not to think about it now, her spike-heeled pumps clapping down another flight of cement stairs (thirty-two down, seven to go), drowned out by the steady pound of feet above and below her, and all she can focus on is _down_ and _out_ and the back of Robin's neck in front of her. His shirt is white, stark against the red flush of his neck. He has a tiny freckle just below his hairline.

At every landing he calls her name, _Regina_ and she answers back _Yes_ and they keep going.

Six flights to go.

Regina?

Yes.

Five flights to go.

Regina?

Yes.

There's a freckle on the back of his neck, his skin is flushed, that little speck of brown is the last thing she sees before the building shudders, a sound she cannot even describe ripping through the air around them.

And then the lights go out.


	2. Chapter 2

Once is an accident, twice is war. He's seen the latter, and he has no desire to revisit it, but it seems fate is giving him no choice today.

They're in the dark now, and dark creates panic, bodies crushing, scrambling, frantic for the promise of light below.

He has always been calm under pressure, and right now he supposes he is, comparatively, but his heart is racing and he's sweating, and there's a thin veneer of distress under it all.

He should have been holding her hand.

He should have had her in front of him, should have protected her from behind, but the need to shield her is intense, has been for months, since his last visit here and the new scar above her lip, the appraising, possessive posture of the man at her arm (always, always at her arm, never leaving for a second) at the company Christmas party.

So he'd been in front of her, a bulwark against whatever danger lay ahead, and here in the dark, he's lost her, pushed ahead by a tidal wave of people and unsure whether she's kept pace with him.

He calls her name _Regina!_ and hears her breathless _Yes!_ from just behind him and then there's a fist in his shirt, in his collar, choking him.

He gropes for it – slim fingers, slippery with sweat – and squeezes hard.

"You?" he asks, and she squeezes back hard, says _Yes_ again and relief floods him.

Twenty steps left, maybe thirty, he's lost count.

He shifts his grip, locks his hand with hers and doesn't let go.


	3. Chapter 3

The lobby is unrecognizable, the air thick with dust, the floor covered with broken glass, and there are more people, firefighters like the ones they'd passed on their descent, brave men going up while they'd gone down.

Her mouth tastes like dirt, and her fingers are slippery against Robin's, and she can hear her own heartbeat as his iron grip (who knew he was so strong, thank God he's so strong) tugs her forward, toward the street. He turns back to look at her, to check on her, and she thinks he looks wrong, something looks wrong, but she can't place it. Still, the sight of him is reassuring and she follows, quick step after quick step, out onto the street.

It's loud, sirens and shouting, and she feels numb and also vibrant, she can feel her pulse in her shaking fingertips, in her elbows, in her jelly-like knees, a hard beat beat beat beat.

"Don't look up." The voice is gruff and authoritative and unfamiliar. "Just keep going."

Her mother always told her she was a terrible listener, never did what she was told, and Leo says that too, all the time.

Today, though, she listens. Her focus is narrowed to Robin's hand (it's hot, and he's crushing her fingers, and her knees feel like tissue paper now, insubstantial), and she looks at his back as he walks her north.

His shirt is no longer white.

It's grey now, everything is grey, like the world has lost all its color, it's surreal, and the sirens, and the sidewalk looks like it's covered in chalk.

They walk for hours or maybe minutes, she's not sure, and then he stops suddenly and turns to her, grasping at her shoulders.

"Are you alright?" He asks, his voice hoarse and raspy, his fingers coasting along her sleeves.

He's grey. Dusty. His skin, his hair, there's a patina of dust clinging to every bit of him.

Regina swallows hard (her throat is dry, dusty, it tastes like ash), and nods frantically.

"Yeah, I think— I-I think so."

He glances up then, above her, and his face goes slack with shock.

"What-?" She turns as she asks, and answers her own question, sagging slightly in his grip as her knees just disappear.

The numb, shell-shocked part of her brain thinks, _Minutes, not an hour,_ an answer to a question she'd forgotten asking herself. They hadn't walked far – far enough, but not far.

In the not-quite-distance, her office building stands, tall and proud, a beacon to lower Manhattan (come up out of the subway, look left, look right, there's the Towers, that must be south). There's thick, black smoke and flame curling from a smoldering gash in the upper floors. It looks like a matchstick stood on its end. And next to it there's nothing. Just nothing.

She blinks, blinks again harder, like it's her vision that is wrong and not everything else. The air is smoky but her eyes aren't lying: the other tower is gone.

"My God..."

Robin's voice is scant and stunned, his hands still firm on her arms, his sweat dampening the silk of her blouse. They're trembling.

"What's happening?" She feels herself speak, but doesn't hear it, her voice a whistle of breath, her tongue is thick and numb. She tries again. "Wh-what—?"

His grip pulses against her, and for once the tight hold of a man's grip is a comfort and not a threat.

"Keep going," he murmurs, and then he's pulling her gently, her feet unsteady, she stumbles as she turns but he doesn't let her fall.


	4. Chapter 4

They're still walking north when the second tower collapses, whipping their heads around on instinct when a woman in the knot of people behind them lets out a scream.

It's like something out of a movie, surreal and terrifying, a cloud of ash and debris rolling up the avenue as that tall, proud matchstick crumples into ash.

She's tugged, yanked, stumbles blindly around a corner and then his body is against hers. Brick at her back, Robin at her front, sheltering her. She ducks her head down against him, her hand trapped between his shoulder and her mouth (she doesn't even remember lifting it there, her fingers are icy, shaking, she's shaking all over). He smells like sweat and dust, the distinct masculine smell of men's deodorant and somewhere underneath that, a phantom whiff of the cologne he always wears.

For a moment, she feels sheltered, almost safe. As safe as possible under the circumstances. Does peace come before death, she wonders? Is this it? Worse, does she mind? (Yes, she thinks. She does mind.)

She's not sure how long they stand there, listening to shouting and sirens and chaos. But they don't die, and eventually he must decide they're not going to, because Robin leans away from her slightly. His hands move from the building at her back, and she realizes hers are now white-knuckled in his dress shirt.

It is most definitely no longer white.

She loosens her grip and wipes at the ash on his shoulder, the sweat on her hands only darkening it, making it look grimy. She can see her fingers shaking, so she curls them into the fabric again and holds tight.

The air is grey, everything is just...grey.

"Regina—" Her gaze flicks to his and holds, and then all of a sudden he's kissing her, his fingers tangling in her hair, pulling slightly but she barely feels it and she's glad for it anyway. It means she's alive enough to feel pain.

He tastes like dust, and his mouth is hot and damp, his body solid against hers. Warm. He's warm and solid and alive, and she can feel the roughness of brick through the silk at her shoulders.

There are sirens, and there's shouting, and there's Robin's mouth, demanding and desperate and then suddenly there's nothing.

He rips away from her; she feels cold, her fingers slack, one hand rising to touch lips that tingle, the other pressing against the brick behind her to anchor her.

It's not until he apologizes that she remembers she's married, and that kissing is not something she should be doing with the very attractive British consultant who just narrowly survived whatever-the-hell-is-going-on-right-now with her.

"It's okay," she tells him, pressing her lips together and letting her hand fall back to join the other on the brick. "Under the circumstances."

He nods, and holds out a hand for her, but says nothing more on the subject.

"Come on, let's get somewhere safe."


	5. Chapter 5

Robin is calm under pressure; he has seen war zones. He just never imagined lower Manhattan would be one of them.

But it is, now. Unrecognizable from the streets he'd walked this morning, the sidewalks full of people all walking uptown. Evacuation, someone tells him. Everything south of Canal.

He'd been headed to his flat, a long-term rental for the month he's living here. It's his last week, he almost escaped this. _If he'd left a week sooner who would have seen her safely out?_ he wonders. Someone would have. Jeff maybe, or Kathryn. He wonders where they are now, if they made it to safety.

He'll try to find out later, but right now he has one focus: Regina.

It's not his place to protect her, but it's not as if there's anyone else who does, and dammit a man's supposed to take care of what he loves and he loves Regina Blanchard. However inappropriate it is to love a married woman, he does. Has for ages. It's only the ring on her finger that's kept him from pursuing her (the distance between London and New York be damned), the ring he resents not because it means some other man has her but because he knows the man who does isn't worthy.

She hides it well, but not well enough. He grew up in a home with loud voices and bruises covered over carefully with concealer and rouge, and the stiff-backed posture and carefully blank expression meant to hide dark fury on the other end of a phone line. She hides it well, but he's familiar with the sight of a battered woman and he knows she goes home to a nightmare.

So he resents that ring, and resents that man, and today, right now, she's his to protect, his to see to safety and so he won't fail her the way _he_ has.

He'd been taking her to his place, hoping for a news channel and clothes that aren't caked with ash (it's eerie, the sight of her, of the others who were nearby - rattled bodies, grey and dusty, moving inexorably north like a migration of zombies).

But they're evacuating everything below Canal, and she's begun to limp beside him, sharp hisses sounding with every step. She's hurt, he realizes with a jolt.

He pulls them from the stream of people and stops.

"What's wrong?"

"I'm fine." She shakes her head, her voice steady but tight. She's lying though - she's gotten good at lying through pain (she's had one hand gingerly resting over the sleeve of her left arm since she came in yesterday, a protective move to hide injuries she's covered with fabric and bravado).

"What's wrong?" He brooks no argument this time.

"My ankle – my heels – it's just raw – it's fine." She shakes her head again, dismissive, and Robin cranes his neck slightly to look down. She's wearing stilettos. He's surprised she hasn't snapped a heel in all the commotion, wonders why she didn't just take them off. They'd been black this morning, but now they're dusty and scuffed, one of them rimmed with red.

He grimaces at the sight – she's not just raw, she's bleeding, the delicate back of her ankle scraped open and smeared with crimson, dark and sticky mixed with the dust clinging to her skin. No wonder she's hissing.

His place is too far, he won't make her walk all that way like this.

Robin slips an arm around her waist, and grips firmly, urging, "Lean some weight on me. I've a friend who lives nearby; we'll stop there."

This time she nods, and her weight, what little of it there is, presses into his side, her limp exaggerated now as she favors her injured leg and uses him as a very large crutch.

He can feel her lungs expand and contract against his arm as they walk and thanks God that she's alive.


	6. Chapter 6

The pain is a reminder that she's alive.

Ow.

The pain is a reminder that she's alive.

Ow.

It's a mantra with every step, even Robin's solid presence beside her, half holding her as she limps along on the ball of her foot, isn't enough to quell the grinding scrape of leather over skin with every step she takes.

But the pain is a reminder that she's alive.

She doesn't know where he's taking her, doesn't really care, to be honest. Somewhere, anywhere, that she can sit for a minute and maybe find a band-aid, wipe away some of this dust. Somewhere they can figure out what the hell is going on.

It doesn't feel real, any of it, the reality that the office she's walked into every day for the last four years is no longer there. A pile of rubble behind her (come out of the subway, look left, look right, how will you know which way is South?). There was a picture on her desk, her and her father, one of her favorites and now it's gone. Forever. She feels tears prick her eyes at the loss and feels stupid. Selfish.

People are dead back there, maybe people she knows, certainly people she's seen in the elevator, day after day. People are dead and she's tearing up over a photograph.

She blinks rapidly to clear the wetness from her eyes and focuses on keeping her weight off her ankle.

The pain is a reminder that she's alive, and others were not so lucky.

She steps hard, feels the raw, scraping agony. Punishment for her own tactless thoughts.

Robin shifts his grip slightly, his fingers holding tight to her hip, taking some of her weight.

They walk another block, and then he stops.

"We're here."

It's an unassuming brick building, nothing special. Robin holds the door open for her, and Regina limps her way inside. He follows, his hand brushing the fabric over her elbow as he passes her and pushes one of the buzzers.

"Please be home," he mutters under his breath.

Regina leans against the wall and lifts her foot. She's well aware that she's alive by now.

A voice sounds in the entry, staticky and short. "Yeah?"

"It's Robin. Can we come up?"

The buzz of the door unlocking is immediate, and loud enough to make her jerk.

"You should take those off." Robin nods toward her shoes. "It's a walk-up."

Then he's pushing open the inner door, holding it for her as she takes his suggestion and yanks off her traitorous shoe and its pair. They've gone from black to grey, the inside of one heel smeared with blood. Her calves are dusty, but she can still see the outline of her pumps, can see the stark line where she goes from ashy to bare, tanned skin. She rubs one foot over the other to get rid of it, then follows after Robin.

There's something reassuring about the feel of the old cracked tile under her bare feet. Cold. Solid. Grounded.

She lets the pumps dangle from her fingers as she heads for the stairs. Her ankle stings but it's better than before, and the stairs aren't terribly steep or tight but she finds herself taking a deep breath as she climbs, remembering the long, steady descent from what feels like hours ago.

 _What time is it?_ she wonders. It never occurs to her to check her watch.

But it has to have been a while, she should check in. There's no way that what happened downtown has gone unnoticed. Leopold will be worried. Her stomach dips with nerves. Leopold will be furious she waited so long to call. That she left him to wonder if she was among the lost for this long. She'll pay for the delay - or maybe the fact that she nearly died this morning will spare her his temper.

Maybe.

She reaches on autopilot for her pocketbook, but she doesn't have it. It's on her desk at work. (No, it's not, she thinks. She doesn't have a desk at work. She doesn't have a desk. Or an office or— Regina swallows heavily.)

"Do you have your cell?" she asks Robin, who is following closely behind her. "I need to call Leo."

His footsteps stop, so she does, too. When she turns toward him, he's looking hard at her. Not hard – intense. Leo is hard. Cold. Robin is warm, kind. But he's capable of this, of intensity.

"Don't call him," he says, finally.

"Robin, he's my husband; I have to let him know I'm safe."

Robin shakes his head, his right hand reaching for her left, gripping it lightly. They're both still clammy.

"You died today."

Regina's brow knits, because no, she didn't. The pain is a reminder that she's still alive. There's half a second where she has the insane thought that maybe she _did_ die, that maybe this is purgatory (all that grey, the ghostly figures in the streets), but she can still feel her pulse, slower than before but not quite back to normal. She feels like she's run a marathon, and there's the pain in her ankle. She's very much alive.

She shakes her head. "What? No, we're-"

Robin's fingers slip to her wrist and she watches dumbly as he tugs at the button of her cuff and then slides the green silk (not green anymore, frosted and grey like his shirt) up her arm. Her protective instinct has been buried beneath all the ones keeping her alive so she doesn't realize until it's too late what he's doing.

But then the silk is at her elbow and there are deep purple bruises on her forearm. Finger-shaped and starkly telling. She startles and reaches to cover them but he grasps her hand, fingers gentle as his voice as he repeats, "You died today. They never found your body. You went into the office this morning, and never came out."

She blinks, blinks.

Oh.

 _Oh._

He's saying she should— "No."

Regina shakes her head slowly, backing up a step away from him. "Robin, no. I can't do that."

"Why not?"

"Because— Because I _didn't_ die this morning."

"But you could have," he tells her, fingers squeezing hers, eyes earnest and charged. "Who's to say you didn't? Regina, you deserve better than this."

She stares at him, dumbfounded, her eyes welling with hot tears that she forces back with a flutter of her lashes. And she can't help wondering, "How did you know?"

"My father was..." He breathes in, out, a flicker of pain in those deep blue eyes that tell her the rest of his sentence before he does. "...like your husband. And trust me, Regina, it won't get any better. Maybe you believe it will, but it won't. I'm sure you love him—"

"I don't," she blurts, then wishes she'd bit her tongue. Not that she loves Leopold, because she doesn't, but it would make it easier to refuse this absolutely insane idea of his.

"You..." His brows lift. "Don't?"

Regina exhales and shakes her head. She's said it, might as well stick with it. "No. I don't love him."

"Then why are you still with him?"

Something creeps up her spine, shame and dread and anger, a sick, sticky mixture of emotion, and she shifts her gaze to their hands as she admits, "If I leave, he'll kill me."


	7. Chapter 7

He'd heard it before – when he was young, from his father. _If you ever leave me, it'll be the last thing you do_. Still, he's unprepared to hear the words on Regina's lips.

His grip tightens, his teeth grind.

He can feel the blood thumping in his veins for the second time today, but this time for entirely different reasons.

"Did he tell you that?" The dark anger of his voice is unexpected, even to him.

She's been looking down, but she glances up now, her face drawn, brows just barely pinched. Like she's going for that careful blankness that protects her most days, but can't quite find it.

And then her chin ticks up a half centimeter and she says plainly, "Yes." Her voice doesn't shake, but it's low. "He's a powerful man, and he keeps me on a tight leash. If I try to run, I won't make it far. He'll find me. And he'll kill me."

He won't. Robin is certain of that – will _make_ certain of that – and for a moment, this moment, here in this hallway, the chaos of the morning seems very far away. If it wasn't for the grey tinge of her hair, the dust she keeps blinking out of her lashes, he could almost pretend it had been a bad dream. But it wasn't, it's very real. Chaos and destruction and death have been hot on their heels all morning, and he'll be damned if he will let her walk back into danger now that he's only just ushered her away from it.

"Not if you're already dead," he tells her. "Regina, please."

It's so obvious to him – the slim, dreadful escape hatch they've uncovered through happenstance. A way to ease her suffering.

"Robin, people are dead back there. Real people, with loved ones who are sitting at home hoping and praying and waiting for them to come home, and they never will, and I am _alive_ , I can't just—"

"And what will you be going home to, hmm?" His brows lift, challenging her, his grip (lighter now, looser now, but still firm) turning her wrist lightly, so those deep finger-bruises that make his stomach slick and oily are pointed more clearly up into the dim light of the stairwell. "Is this the comforting embrace you want to return to tonight?"

Too far. He pushed too far. Her face shuts down – there's the blank expression, a bit of heat in her eyes, her mouth tight as she yanks her arm out of his grasp (he lets her go easily) and reaches to fasten the button at her wrist again.

"I'm not having this conversation with you, not right now," she mutters, and Robin wants to fight her on it, truly he does, but she adds a weary, "I just want to get inside and figure out what the hell is going on."

And he can't begrudge her _that_ – he wants that, too. And he wants to get a clean change of clothes for the both of them, get all of that dust and ash out of their hair, off their skin.

So when she turns without another word to climb the stairs, Robin follows.

They can talk about it again later – they _will_ talk about it again later.

In the meantime, they need answers, and shelter.

So they make their way to the fourth floor, and he guides her to the door of apartment 407.

Robin knocks, and the door swings open, Neal standing there in sweatpants and a rumpled t-shirt. His eyes widen at the sight of them and he blurts a stunned, "Holy shit. Holy _shit_ ," and then he's stepping back and letting the door open wide.

"Get in, come in," he invites without so much as a hello.

Neal gets them both something clean to wear, something strong to drink, and they sit on his beat up old couch for what feels like hours watching the news. Watching at all happen again, and again.

Robin tries to call home, to get word back to Will and Roland that he's safe, but the phones are out. The lines are all jammed.

Regina is quiet. She sits next to him in clothes borrowed from the woman who lives next door – yoga pants and a tank top, and one of Neal's hoodies to hide the bruises on her arm.

She's quiet, but at least she's here. Here, and safe, and whole.

She closes her eyes as the television shows their office building falling to rubble one more time, and he tells himself that _here_ , and _safe_ , and _whole_ are enough for now. More than.

More than so many other people can claim.

He'll ask her again, later—tonight. He'll ask her to run, to let him _help_ her run. But right now, it's enough to slide his arm around her shoulders, to feel her sink into his side, to feel the breath in her lungs as she inhales deeply and exhales hard.

Right now, just being alive together is plenty.


End file.
